She looked over his shoulder and said, “Matthew.”
He sighed and let go. “All right.”
“You forgot to close the door.”
3.
THE BATHROOM DOOR WAS OPEN, SO SHE LOOKED IN. MATTHEW WAS sitting on the side of the bathtub, applying Bacitracin to a welt on his knee.
“What happened?”
“Carpet.” He grimaced and reached for a Band-Aid on the sink.
She was willing to apologize to all kinds of people for all kinds of things, but not that. “Can I borrow your robe?”
“Help yourself.”
She grabbed it off the back of the door and went into the living room, where the monograph was still on the floor. A page had been creased when it dropped, but maybe she could press it out before Friday. She took it to the couch and started with the contents. BACKGROUND. SYNOPSIS OF SHOOTING SCHEDULE …
“Did you want to talk?” He had his jeans back on and was standing a couple of feet in front of her, hands in pockets.
“What about?” Couldn’t he see she was reading?
He braced a hand on the back of his head and lifted his face to the ceiling. “Reagan’s tax policies. What do you think?”
“You mean, about the sex we just had.”
“Yes. That.”
She didn’t see anything she could use as a bookmark, and dog-earing the page might give Andy a heart attack, so she kept the book open and tried not to look down at it. “I thought you didn’t want to fight.”
“I don’t.”
“Awesome. Neither do I.” DISASTROUS PREVIEW IN POMONA. CRITICAL RECEPTION. Maybe she should go to that first. No, let’s have a look at DEMISE OF CIVITAS.
“I think we should spell out terms.” She looked back at him. “To avoid misunderstandings. Like Christmas.”
I understand perfectly, she thought. I understand you came back, and I need to bide my time. “Fine. Lay it on me. Do you want to sit down?”
He didn’t move. “I think it’s obvious neither one of us wants things to end.”
“Yep. Got that loud and clear, Matthew.” You had such a swell time with Ah-nuh that you jumped on me first chance you had. Got that too, professor.
“But the basic situation hasn’t changed. You know that, right?”
“Did I ask you to change it?”
“No, but …”
“Like you always said. You do what you want. And so do I.” Civitas went into bankruptcy in 1932, along with a wave of other … The book slipped out of her hands.
“Why don’t we put this aside for one little moment.” He placed it face down on the table. “Are you all right with going back to things as they were?”
“I guess not.”
He dropped beside her and slid way down the cushions. “Then you’d best tell me now.”
“Next time, we have to make it to the couch. You think your knees hurt, you should see my back.” She reached for the book.
“Does this call for first aid?”
“Later.” The Civitas film library was thought to have little value, but it was part of the assets sold to … A hand slid to cover the page.
“We understand each other?”
“I heard everything you said, and I said I understood, didn’t I?” Everything. Including when you said you missed me. Don’t you try to tell me that was only after St. Moritz.
The hand lifted. “I’m going to start dinner.” He got up. The negatives in were stored in … “Steak?”
“Don’t make too much.” She lowered the book and watched him open the refrigerator.
You’re mine. I know it. You just don’t know it yet.
He started taking things out of drawers and cabinets and putting them on the counter. A bowl, an onion, a knife.
“Isn’t it kind of early to start dinner?”
“I’m marinating them. It’s all part of the wonderful world of cooking. You should join us here sometime.”
“I cooked all the time for Granana, the whole last year before she went in the nursing home.” She bent her head back to the book. A fire at the warehouse in 1956 destroyed all known negatives of Civitas …
“What on earth did you cook?”
“Quick stuff. Chicken. There was this list of food she could eat. It was only about a page long. Everything had to be low-fat and no-salt on account of her kidneys. Then I’d turn my back for a minute and she’d throw in a ham hock.”
He started peeling garlic. “I know better than to ask you to chop anything.”
“I can chop!”
“Since you’re here anyway,” he said, dragging a cutting board from the back of the sink, “and since you passed up the chance to have our fight, why don’t you tell me how you found out your neighbor was in a movie.”
She didn’t want to put down the book, but if she was going to be asking him for favors she supposed it was only fair to tell him why. She placed it face down to mark her place and slipped up on the barstool next to the counter. Her version was shorter than Miriam’s, but she kept circling back to details she’d forgotten, like Miriam’s hair falling out, and including things she’d meant to leave out, like how mean Emil got toward the end. By the time she got around to Myrna Loy (“The one from The Thin Man? She was cute”) he’d chopped up the onions and the garlic and finished whatever he was going to use to soak the steaks, having poured in something from every bottle in his cabinet. She was a little afraid of this marinade. He pulled the steak package out of the fridge.
She waited. “Isn’t that the most tragic thing you’ve ever heard?”
He pulled a mallet out of a drawer. “Tragic, not really. Bit depressing.”
“A bit? She was in love with the man! Hollywood destroyed him! Almost destroyed her, too!”
“I don’t think the sack of Rome would have destroyed Miriam.” He was laying wax paper over a steak.
“I think you’re being incredibly cold.”
“It’s sad.” He grabbed the mallet and brought it down on the steak with a whump. “But look at it rationally. Let’s say he lives. And she stays with him.” Whump. “Alcoholic, washed-up director.” Whump. “Verbally abusive.” Whump. “Potential to get physically abusive.” Whump.
“Never,” she protested.
Whump. “Could happen. All he has to do”—whump—“is miss the wall one night and connect with her face.” He pulled the steak off the cutting board, laid it in a baking dish and grabbed another. “She goes to France with him.” Whump. “He drinks.” Whump. “She does who knows what to support them”—whump—“sewing, maybe, or laundry”—whump—“and this goes on for ten years”—whump—“until the day his countrymen”—whump—“show up in tanks.” Whump. He peeled off the wax paper and stuck the mallet in the sink. “You say that’s grand thwarted passion. I say she was well out of it.” He laid the second steak in the baking dish. “Quit glaring at me. You’ve plenty enough sense to know I’m right.”
“I thought I didn’t have any common sense.”
“I didn’t say you had none. I said you didn’t use it.” He picked up the bowl and poured the marinade over the steaks.
“Maybe you have no sense of romance.” He stopped, the bowl poised over the sink. Then he lowered it in.
“Haven’t seen enough old movies, I suppose.”
“Well then, are you going to help me see what’s left of this one?”
“I don’t see how I can get out of it.” He shoved the dish with the steaks to one side of the counter.
“Aren’t you going to put that in the fridge?”
“Tastes better if you leave it out.” Matthew and Jim were the only men she’d ever seen who washed their hands with the dish soap.
“How long?”
“Couple of hours or so.”
“What? It could go bad or something.”
“Christ. Americans and their germ phobias.” He shut off the tap and shook the water off his hands.
She leaned over to have a look. “I don’t even know what you h
ave in there. It could kill us both.”
“Wouldn’t that be just like a movie?”
“I don’t know any movies with a big food poisoning angle. It isn’t very cinematic.” She slid off the barstool and headed for the couch.
“Where do you think you’re going?” He followed her.
She grabbed the book and curled her legs up on the couch. “I have to read this. I only have until Friday. Unless …”
“Unless what? Unless I have a better idea? I have much better ideas.” He was standing over her.
“There’s a lot of Xerox machines at Courant,” she reminded him. He covered his face with his hands. “What?”
“Yes, there are copy machines,” he said from under his hands, “and they’re all guarded by harpies.”
“Go to Harry’s secretary and use your charm,” she suggested.
He lowered his hands. “Angie can’t stand the sight of me. And I haven’t any charm, I’m a mathematician. And I’m a priss.”
That meant he wanted her to take it back. But if he was going to insult her common sense, as far as she was concerned, he was still a priss. “Sneak into the office when she isn’t there, then. Or tell her it’s for a big secret conference. Come on. Improvise. Live a little.”
This was ridiculous. Every time she picked up the book, Matthew was pulling it out of her hands. Wasn’t she ever going to get some time alone with it? “Fine, Miss Reilly. I’ll just spend the next couple of weeks perjuring myself for you. No worries. But you have to put this sodding book down now.” He closed the book and tossed it on the coffee table. Great, he’d lost her place. “And I’ll take it as a personal favor if you don’t sit there giving it long, yearning looks.” He put his hands on the couch on either side of her, still standing.
“I’ll need two copies,” she told him.
FEBRUARY
1.
THEY GOT COFFEE AT A DELI AND DRANK IT AS MATTHEW WALKED HER to work. She had on yesterday’s outfit, but it wasn’t the first time that had happened. And anyway, nobody at the store had seen yesterday’s outfit yesterday.
Once she found out when Miriam could come uptown with them, he was going to call the Brody. Her anxieties about how he was going to get them in were dismissed out of hand: “If I can’t come up with a good reason why a mathematician would want to see a movie clip, they should send me back to Cambridge.”
She figured they would have to be honest about who Miriam was. If Matthew tried to claim she was his grandmother or a professor emeritus, his two half-serious suggestions, even now Miriam’s face was so clearly the one in the movie that the Brody people might figure it out. But explaining Ceinwen herself would be a snap, said Matthew; “you’re my research assistant.”
“Doesn’t assistant sound kind of suspicious?” she asked.
“Suspicious how?”
“I don’t know,” she said, unwilling to admit that she thought it sounded like a stripper he’d stashed in an apartment on 42nd Street. “I think secretary sounds more respectable.”
“Secretary sounds worse.”
“There’s nothing dodgy about being a secretary,” she said, showing off a word she’d picked up from him. “My mother was a secretary.”
“That so. Where?”
“Cotton broker.”
“A cotton broker having a secretary is perfectly logical. A postdoc showing up with his own secretary, that sounds dodgy.”
He peeled off one door down from Vintage Visions, still refusing to have anything to do with Lily. He had kept the monograph and promised her about five different times that yes, he’d find a way to finagle two copies. She watched his back for a moment, then checked her watch. Five minutes early. Take that, Lily. This year was finally turning around.
She clocked in and breezed over to the counter. Talmadge was on the men’s side showing leather jackets to a man she thought was kind of handsome, but since he was a blond she knew Talmadge wasn’t going to linger and try to flirt. And she also knew Talmadge would have something to say to her today. She had called the apartment last night and left a brief message on the machine to say she wasn’t coming home, she was spending the night with Matthew. Sure enough, when Lily disappeared outside for her cigarette, Talmadge sidled over to the counter.
“And how are we this fine afternoon?” he asked.
“We’re swell,” she said, and took out the Windex so she could clean the counter mirror. “At least, I’m swell. Do you have something you want to tell me?”
“No, gracious no. I have no problem here. Nooo problem at allll.” He reached in his pocket and put on his glasses, black-rimmed sixties-style things he wore only when he wanted to emphasize his seriousness, since the lenses were plain glass. “As long as you’re doing this for the right reason.”
“What’s the right reason?” She grabbed the paper towels.
“Going back for the sex, that’s the right reason. Going back because you’re attached to this guy, that would be the wrong reason.”
She sprayed the mirror. “The sex is great. For the record.”
“That surprises me. I don’t know if you know this, but I had an English guy once, too. We lasted maybe a couple of months. All he did was talk.”
“No sex?”
“No sweetie, I mean he talked during sex. The whole time. Like he was narrating, I swear to god. So I always thought that must be because most of them are funny-looking—”
“Matthew is not funny looking!”
“Oh, Matthew’s fine. I told you that. He showers, he shaves, he makes eye contact.”
“He’s—”
“But come on, England isn’t wall-to-wall hunks like Spain or Italy. Let’s face it, all most of them’ve got is the accent. After that, the party’s over.” She tried to break in again but he forged on. “I figured Julian, that was his name, Julian, and it wasn’t the kind of name you wanted to be calling out at a big moment—”
“Talmadge—”
“I figured Julian thought if he didn’t keep reminding me of what was cute about him to begin with, I could change my mind at any point.”
“There has to be a reason you’re telling me this.” She finished wiping off the mirror and stashed away the Windex.
“I’m telling you to be careful.”
“We use condoms, all right?”
“I think you know,” he said, removing his glasses, “that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“He came back. That says it all, doesn’t it?”
“It could say all kinds of things.” He suddenly turned around. “Shit, there’s Lily.” She wished she had his ability to sense Lily’s disturbance in the force, without even facing the door. “I’ll talk to you later sweetie.”
Talmadge’s shift ended before hers. The day held no potholes, although early February was as dead as it got in retail, and she sped home to see if she could catch Miriam. She galloped up the steps to the fifth floor, but no light shone under Miriam’s door. She knocked and waited. No response.
She trudged into the apartment and put her coat away. Jim came out from his room and stood in the door.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Swell,” she told him.
He leaned against the doorjamb. “All right then. Do you want to watch a movie?”
Thank god. This was Jim’s way of letting her know he wasn’t going to give her a hard time about Matthew. “I won’t be able to concentrate. I have to go ask Miriam something.” Jim’s eyebrows rose. “It’s a secret,” she added. “I’ll tell you later.”
Talmadge came out of the kitchen with his ice cream pint and a spoon. “All right Talmadge, here’s our chance,” said Jim cheerfully. “Ceinwen’s not watching the movie with us. Nightmare on Elm Street, how does that sound?”
She went into her room and picked up the copy of Louise Brooks’s essays that she’d just bought at the Strand, flipping through the pages to the tune of muffled cries of pain and horror from the TV set. She kept checking the clock and each time a
nother half-hour or so passed, she walked through the apartment, trying not to look at the TV, and went downstairs to see if Miriam had arrived. The third time she did it, Jim paused the video and said mildly, “You could leave a note on her door, you know.”
She could, at that. Ceinwen thought about it. “I don’t know, I’d feel funny doing that with Miriam.”
Sometime around midnight she gave up.
She woke up early, tiptoed into the kitchen and discovered that even the Cafe Busted was gone. Thrifty would be open. She pulled on her blue Harlow dress and didn’t bother with underwear. She added some striped leggings and her Doc Martens. Ceinwen had been wanting to see how she’d look if she mixed up her vintage with new items, like some of the girls who came into the store. Now she had her answer: terrible. Even a bra wouldn’t help.
But it was good enough for Thrifty. She put on her coat, picked up her bag and closed the door to the apartment as quietly as she could.
She passed Miriam’s door without stopping; too early to knock. On the next landing she realized she was hearing a steady noise. Rattle, bump. Rattle, bump. She slowed and looked down the stairwell. Praise be, it was Miriam.
“Hey!” she called, then looked around, hoping no neighbor would pop out to rebuke her. Miriam waved and paused as Ceinwen scrambled down to meet her. The noise was from Miriam’s laundry; she had a bag stuffed in one of those rolling wire boxes that homeless guys used to wheel their stuff.
“Sorry,” said Miriam, “do you need to get past?”
“Nah. Let me take this for you.”
“I’m not an invalid. I do this all the time.”
“I know, but I’m going down anyway.” Ceinwen grabbed the basket and lifted. It was a bit heavy even for her, and she had no idea how Miriam was managing.
“I go early,” Miriam was saying, with what amounted to cheeriness for her. “No waiting. I used to have a little washer-dryer in the apartment, but the landlord made me get rid of it. Said it was against the rules, because of the pipes.” They’d reached the bottom. Miriam held open the door.
“That’s terrible.”
“Isn’t it just. Making a poor broken-down old lady do this every week. The man’s a monster.” Miriam put the back of her hand to her forehead, then grinned. “He was hoping I’d move out. Ha. Fooled him. Had to give up the washer six years ago and I’m still here, just like that Sondheim song.” They were at the street corner now; the closest laundromat was halfway down the next block.
Missing Reels Page 18